First Stepping Stone in a New Path

A staircase that connects student apartments and training rooms: The advancement of handicraft skills for young people is at the center of the project “First Stepping Stone in a New Path.” Just as important as the professional exchange and the physical means of getting from A to B is the intercultural contact between the ten trainees from Germany and the boarding school students of the Israeli Kibbutz Eshbal. For the visitors from Berlin, this means getting to know the everyday reality of Israeli school children while passing on their professional expertise in the process of building. The experiences are not confined to the participants alone, but both organizational partners also benefit from this lasting cooperation. The founding of a vocational school in Ravid could be one future result of this cooperation.

The project “First Stepping Stone in a New Path” brings seven trainees and three instructors from Germany together with the students of an Israeli boarding school in the Kibbutz Eshbal in Sakhnin from May to July 2011. Three weeks of on-site collective work is part of the project, which is organized by the Knobelsdorff Vocational School for Structural Engineering in Berlin and the Education Association for Structural Engineering (Bildungsverein Bautechnik) in cooperation with the Israeli Youth Organization HaNoar HaOved VeHaLomed.